factors evidence social etiology

Criminal behavior results from a complex interplay of social and biological factors. Social factors are a reflection of environmental sources of influence, such as socioeconomic status. The terms "biological" and "genetic" are often confused, in part due to the fact that they represent overlapping sources of influence. Biological factors are more inclusive, consisting of physiological, biochemical, neurological, and genetic factors. Genetic factors refer to biological factors that are inherited. Social factors, on the other hand, cannot be inherited. Until recently, the majority of criminological research focused solely on social contributors, either minimizing or negating the importance of genetic and biological influences on criminal behavior. In the past fifteen years, however, a large body of evidence has accumulated that suggests that the etiology of criminal behavior may be better understood when genetic and biological factors are also taken into account. Evidence for the role of genetic factors in the etiology of criminal behavior carries the assumption that biological factors mediate this relationship. Therefore, in this entry, we will first discuss the role of genetics in the etiology of criminal behavior, followed by evidence outlining the importance of biological factors.

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Epidemiological evidence that genetic factors contribute to criminal behavior come from three sources: family, twin, and adoption studies. The limitation of family studies is the inability to separate the genetic and environmental sources of variation. Therefore, given the limited utility of family studies to separate issues of nature versus nurture, this section will focus on two other epidemiolo…

The importance of gene-environment interactions are illustrated in several adoption studies. For example, the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on inhibiting or promoting the expression of the genetic vulnerability to criminality have been examined in two large-scale adoption studies, the Danish and Swedish adoption studies. Cloninger and others (1982) and Van Dusen and others (1983) have repo…

There is some evidence to suggest that genetic and environmental factors may differentially contribute to the risk of criminality for males and females. It has been hypothesized that females who engage in criminal activity may have a stronger genetic propensity for this type of behavior than males (Sellin). Evidence for this contention is provided by two independent adoption studies in which femal…

Twin and adoption studies have been employed to address this question, yielding mixed results. Relying on criminal arrest data, Cloninger and Gottesman reanalyzed the twin data collected by Christiansen and grouped subjects as either violent offenders or property offenders. Heritability for property offenses was found to be .78 while heritability for violent offenses was .50. Although the genetic …

Recent molecular genetics studies report that a gene related to the serotonin system may be associated with increased risk for the cooccurrence of violence and alcoholism. These efforts have been fueled by the robust finding that alcoholism and violence, in humans and nonhuman primates, may be related to serotonergic dysregulation (Virkkunen et al., 1989; Higley et al., 1992). In a reanalysis of d…

Another pathway that has been investigated as a potential determinant in the etiology of violence is prenatal factors. The prenatal period presents a nine-month window in which the developing fetus may be exposed to a variety of stressors and agents. There are reasons to suspect that these stressors or agents may operate differently depending on when they are introduced. Recently, an increasing am…

Serotonin (5-HT; 5-hydroxytryptamine), a neurotransmitter produced by the raphe nuclei, is thought to be involved in the modulation of impulsivity. Consequently, serotonergic dysregulation may result in a decreased ability to inhibit certain externalizing behavioral patterns and may reflect a deficit in behavioral inhibition. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that violent criminal behavior, an ou…

The field of neuroscience, through the use of brain imaging techniques, has provided illuminating data on the etiology of severe mental disorders, including depression and schizophrenia. These recent technological innovations are computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which provide information on brain structure, and positron emission tomography (PET) and regional cereb…

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